a visual dialogue

This issue we approached A Visual Dialogue slightly differently. Instead of inviting four individual artists to pair up we invited two artist duos to the challenge of creating new work in a limited time frame in response to each other. From three different locations they found that they had nomadism in common and this became the overriding but evolving theme of their exchange. The process opened them all up to new ways of image making. As they necessarily connected across the globe using technology, the physical and digital became intertwined and their final image was created using AI technology. We are thrilled to present them here.

Nomadic Future

Red Rubber Road / AnaHell & Nathalie:
Hi Anastasia and Timofey,
We're really happy to meet you and very much looking forward to embarking on this dialogue with you. We've been looking into your work and we found your series about Amanita Muscaria very interesting. The concept of something that contains the duality of being both attractive and repulsive and generating both fear and awe is something that we also love to play with. We also felt a strong connection to your project about relocation and displacement. The theme of belonging, displacement and the search of a world, a place or a feeling of belonging is something that we really identify with on a personal level as well.

We were wondering what theme to consider for the project and thought that maybe the idea of something attractive and repulsive as a starting point could be something to play with. We are also interested in the idea of belonging, and this could be another theme to explore. At the moment, Nathalie is travelling in Thailand and Ana is in Berlin. Usually we shoot all of our work together except in the case of certain series that we've done where we're not physically present but still portray both of us within the images. Most of our work is self-portraiture but we also do a lot of other types of photography on our own. Since we're in different continents at the moment, each of us will be shooting 3 images for this project, so this might be a bit of a different way of collaborating, and maybe the idea of all of us being in different locations could also be an interesting point for our Visual Dialogue. Where are you guys currently based?
We'd be very interested in hearing what you think about these ideas as input for a theme or if you had something else in mind.

Glish Group / Anastasia & Timofey:
It is a great pleasure for us to meet you as well! We have visited your website and believe that our photos could make an interesting Visual Dialogue. The topic of relocation, displacement, and finding oneself in a new environment is also important to us at the moment, as we had to move frequently last year and only recently settled in the USA (in San Francisco). So, the theme of nomadism may be a starting point for our conversation. The deindividualization and interaction with the environment in your project "Nomader" seems to resonate with our perspective.

We also enjoyed your project "Together a Part." At the moment, we are starting work on a project about transhumanism, immortality, and the way technologies transform the human body and identity. Here, in San Francisco, we feel a strong connection (namely, blurring the lines) between the natural and digital. Therefore, the topic of how digital devices affect our everyday practices and perception of the world is also important to us. We also feel that for us, nomadism transpires in both the physical world and the digital space, so it could be also an interesting theme to work with.

And yes, exploring the duality of being both attractive and repulsive is also an exciting idea.
Perhaps, it can be attributed to interactions with technologies?
Please let us know what you find most interesting.

Red Rubber Road / AnaHell & Nathalie:
Thanks for your message, we’re getting very curious about where this dialogue will take us. The idea of focusing the topic on nomadism in both the physical and digital world could be a great starting point since that theme is quite open. We think that technology itself already entails a strong ambiguity of something that is both attractive and also a bit scary, so this could also be something that we play with within the context of nomadism.

Would you like to start with the first image or would you prefer if we send you the first image?

Glish Group / Anastasia & Timofey:
We were thinking where to start and how to reflect our current perception of nomadism. On the one hand, it’s a feeling of anxiety and loss of home; on the other hand, fascination with the mysterious places where we now live and the trippy atmosphere of San Francisco.
While wandering in search of a subject for the first image, we spontaneously found this place. It reminded us of the dwellings of nomadic tribes and the indigenous people who lived here centuries ago, but have disappeared by now… Myths are often a way for us to feel connected to a place.

This photo is a kind of mockumentary. We often use it in our practice - to stage scenes that come to mind...

Red Rubber Road / Nathalie:
Thanks for sending this first image! It’s really interesting how it contains an ambiguity between something mysterious yet at the same time a bit constricting. It also makes us think of both refuge and imprisonment which is a bit of an uneasy contrast.
I (Nathalie) just moved to the island of Koh Phagnan today and came across a resort that has recently closed. It’s built like a temple with multiple buildings and fancy stone carvings. Something interesting is that you can still visit the website and see the rooms (https://lepalaishotel.com/). I photographed myself at the foot of this resort, which, although abandoned, still appears to be under construction, living somewhere in between two worlds. Thinking about the impermanence of places that are built for people in transit and what really makes a place a home. As a traveller, how long do you have to stay in a place to feel like you’re living there? I also found it unsettling how much the resort draws on culture to market itself to tourists and realized how I myself as a traveller felt extremely compelled by the place with its Indiana Jones vibe.

I suppose that living a nomadic lifestyle in itself brings a lot of ambiguity with it.

Glish Group / Anastasia & Timofey:
Nathalie, thank you so much for the image! We found it interesting how it plays with mythological meanings, reflects immersion in the environment, while also conveying a sense of alienation. We imagined a mythological scene where stone deities guard the entrance to the temple with spears, creating a kind of magical barrier. It reminded us of our frequent feeling we experience traveling - that there is an invisible barrier separating us from the place where we are…

We began to think about the borders we encounter when we travel. They also contain a lot of ambiguity. On the one hand, borders separate countries and they can be tense, uncomfortable and are often are a result of wars… On the other hand, there are borders with other cultures and fundamentally different ways of life and thinking. These borders, on the contrary, can be inviting and often become the reason for travel.

We took this photo near the area where we live in San Francisco, surrounded by many warehouses and industrial buildings. For us, this image reflects our sometimes uneasy feelings from the move and contains the duality of the process of emigration. This scene also evoked associations with Japanese myths and imagery, where ghosts were sometimes depicted as strands of hair…

We have been residing in San Francisco for three months now. We arrived in the US already with the understanding that we will spend at least a year here. Although we feel we are living here, we still feel like strangers. It was unexpected that our first sense of connection to this place would come through cinema (which somehow reminded us of Natalie's experience). We began to see the places through the lens of David Lynch’s films. Despite the fact that Lynch's films do not typically evoke a sense of home comfort, after that we felt the places around us began to feel more familiar…

Red Rubber Road / AnaHell & Nathalie:
Thank you for your image and these thoughts put into words. We find this idea of borders quite interesting, also the invisible barriers that separate cultures and that can separate us from other societies.

Having had a very nomadic upbringing, we often found that there was a kind of barrier between us and the outside world. Through photography and art in general, we feel like we can modify our surroundings by the way we look at them and play with them. In this way, we can really relate to the Lynchian approach that makes things feel more like home. Perhaps it is taking that special moment wherever it is and making it our own through small narratives.

When pondering on borders, visible and nonvisible ones, the first thing that came to mind was the ocean. With these deep masses of water in constant movement, it feels like the ocean can symbolise unclear borders. At the same time, the ocean itself creates its own border and feels like a territory in itself. There is a whole world beneath the surface to which we have very limited access.

We also feel that the ocean is inherently nomadic. It feels like a vast road to somewhere. But it is also a dangerous thing in-between solid ground. And the difficulties crossing this massive border are often deadly.

I (Nathalie) took this photo as I am staying right next to the sea, with a broken mirror found in a deserted shed with a lot of rubbish in it. Garbage is very nomadic these days.

Glish Group / Anastasia & Timofey:
Thank you for your image and letter! We loved your idea about the ocean as a visible, moving border that has a life of its own.

We further reflected on the borders we had to cross to feel more at home here. And one thing that came to mind (in addition to the Lynchian atmosphere) was quite an everyday moment. When we moved to the flat we now rent, it was almost empty, and we had to buy many things to furnish it. Some of them (though they are quite ordinary) we have never used before, for instance, a curtain for the dressing room. Somehow, this acquisition has changed the way we feel about being here.

We’ve decided to view this as a type of borderline and play with the concept of home. Therefore, we placed the curtain within an environment that surrounds us, combining something everyday and surreal.

An interesting thing to note is that the neighborhood where we took the photo (and used to reside in) is in proximity to a place called "Twin Peaks". This is a residential area in San Francisco, situated on the slopes of two hills. The canyon where we were shooting can be easily accessed by descending one of them. Although we are unsure if this location is related to Lynch's series, we have observed that many places in San Francisco share names with movies.

Borders can be natural or artificial, and sometimes they move and transform. When an inanimate object appears to have a life of its own, it can become creepy. The idea of home is also ambiguous, containing both attractiveness and repulsiveness - sometimes we try to find it, but it can also be a place we prefer to escape…

Red Rubber Road / AnaHell & Nathalie:
Wow, we really love this last image. It’s very surreal and somewhat eerie but also very inviting. It seems a little like a portal to another world.

It’s interesting that you have so many references to Lynch movies in San Francisco. Somehow we also feel that the US in itself is such a surreal place with a very peculiar atmosphere that is so different from Europe.

When thinking of the concept of home and objects, the first thing that came to my mind (AnaHell) is my suitcase. For the past 2 years I have been travelling without a stable home or living space.
During this time, I’ve been living out of the suitcase pictured here. That small rectangular space is the container for everything that I carried with me to each of my temporary homes. Something interesting about nomadism and movement are the things we bring with us. I realise how being in transit forces me to be lighter and shows me how few material things I really need.

Here’s my suitcase and I, about to teleport into the world behind the curtains.

Glish Group / Anastasia & Timofey:
Thank you for the image! It seemed like a kind of puzzle that unites the physical and digital world (possibly because of the blue-green unreal light).

Your ideas about a suitcase as an object, which in the absence of a permanent home, accompanies and gives a sense of permanence, led us to the thought that for us, such an object is a projector. Before emigrating, we never took it on our travels, but now we constantly bring it with us. In some ways, we need it much more than most of our belongings. We watch movies on it every day, and when we get tired of the place we live in, it becomes a tool for our digital nomadism…

In the photo, it's the kitchen of our apartment. We have a fairly small and cramped studio, and we watch movies right on its walls. We projected an image taken during our trip to Yamal - the Far North of Siberia, where we went to shoot our photo project Amanita Muscaria. We feel a strong connection to the nomadic culture and have made several photo and film projects about it. Now, being very far from the places in which we loved to travel, we can only meet them in digital space.

For us, digital nomadism has long been combined with the physical, both in our lives and in our art practice. To better understand a place, we often explore it through photography or film - first being there physically, and then through images on the screen - editing or assembling the project.

Perhaps it is the image on the screen that allows us to form a sense of a place.

Red Rubber Road / AnaHell & Nathalie:
Thank you for your image! It’s so interesting to see the juxtaposition of these two worlds colliding.

It’s interesting what you say about digital nomadism and also the fact that you travel with a projector - that’s a great idea!

Something that we love about technology is how it allows us to be in more than one place at a time and how we can connect with one another no matter where we are. We explored this theme of how technology can allow us to enter each other's physical spaces in our series Together A Part which we started during Covid when it was impossible for Nathalie and I to be together in the flesh.

In response to your image, I wanted to bring Nathalie and I into my room again and put us in the same space for a moment in time. The image projected on my bedroom wall was taken a few months ago in this same room, when Nathalie and I were together in Berlin.

Glish Group / Anastasia & Timofey:
We really loved the last image; it is touching and surreal at the same time. It makes a strong impression how physical objects and borders can distort and transform digital or imaginary space…

We began to think about how technology affects our interactions with loved ones who are far away, especially family members.

I (Anastasia) have mixed feelings about this, as during the last year of our emigration, my relationship with my family has become more cold and distant. One way to keep an emotional connection with them is to look into the archives. To reflect my place in the family, I made a collage that combines two photographs: one taken recently in the park of San Francisco, and the other an old family photo taken many years ago near Saint Petersburg.

While doing a collage I was feeling our alienation and lack of contact, however, the resulting silhouettes seem to merge into one dark spot, intertwined with branches. Or maybe it becomes an image of ghosts that roam the parks of San Francisco.

Digital nomadism allows for strange time travels.

Red Rubber Road / AnaHell & Nathalie:
We really like this last image/collage. Thank you for sharing your feelings about how it is for you to be distant from your loved ones, Anastasia. This is definitely something that gives us food for thought as both of our families are quite spread out around the globe.

We were especially drawn to this idea of time travel through digital nomadism. I (Nathalie) have been thinking a lot about how the digital world (my phone, laptop, access to wifi and also my camera) accompanies me on my travels and how through phones and digital communication, we can be in different places at once. I had this thought: I can look at memories from my travels even while I am still travelling; constantly going back and forth, days, weeks and months while simultaneously switching continents by being in touch with my loved ones.

For this photograph, I have brought my eyes from half a year ago and my mouth from some days ago to be here with me in Khao Sok National Park today. The eyes in the photograph have not yet seen the landscape I am now showing them. They could also have been someone else's eyes who may only come here ten years from now or perhaps would never come here at all yet have been placed here to create something that may or may not be unreal.

It’s amusing and fun to think of this space and time travel and the endless possibilities it provides.
It is also my contemplation on how much being in various places and timelines at once may take away from (being in) the present.

Glish Group / Anastasia & Timofey:
Thank you for this wonderful photograph! We really loved how it paradoxically combines different times and spaces and somehow opens a post-human (or non-human) perspective. It's really interesting how it connects nature and technology, constructing a kind of symbiotic body. It made us think about a possible future where technologies will not be a privilege of humans and will allow other living organisms to communicate with each other.

We often think about how technologies open up the possibility of non-human existence. The fact that technologies allow us to connect different places and times at the same moment is a kind of non-human experience - that makes us more like plants and fungi than animals. (Through mycelium and rhizomes, plants and fungi are able to form huge living organisms occupying tens or even hundreds of kilometers, which can sometimes be thousands of years old).

On the other hand, for us, technologies are closely related to illusions and mirages. When our images enter the digital space, they often begin to live their own lives independently of us, turning us into some kind of ghosts… Perhaps this is another aspect of digital nomadism.

In response to your image, we took a photograph where we projected my (Timofey's) photograph taken 1.5 years ago in St. Petersburg onto my face at our home in San Francisco. The archive photograph was taken six months before our emigration from Russia when we were happy and did not yet imagine that we would soon leave our home.

When we took this photograph, we were reflecting on the imaginary aspects of the face and its constructability. (The two images and plants in your photograph form a persistent feeling of a complete living being for us.) When we meet the gaze of the face in the photograph, who is looking at us?

Red Rubber Road / AnaHell & Nathalie:
Thank you for this beautiful image. The juxtaposition of the smiling face over the covered one is such a poetic way of capturing the many emotions and lives that one person can experience over time and distance.

The idea of technology opening up the possibility of non-human existence is certainly an interesting one. Something that we often reflect on about future technologies and digital nomadism is how it alters our bodily experiences. Being able to be in so many places at once without our physical body experiencing each environment through all its senses makes us wonder what role our bodies will play in the near future when we experience more and more things digitally, using a limited amount of senses.

It’s also interesting how through technology we can be in so many places at once but it can also make us not really be fully present where we physically are since our mind and our eyes are engaged elsewhere. In some ways I feel like it can make us be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The way that it’s so easy to document things nowadays also can end up modifying and simplifying our memories due to the fact that we can pull up an image from any day of the year easily on our phones and see what we were up to. It seems like it is no longer real enough to have an experience exclusively recorded by our memory, we need demonstrable proof of our existence.

Thinking about this idea of dehumanising ourselves through technology, I (AnaHell) thought that it would be fitting to upload one of our images into an AI platform and see how it reimagines it. The original image was taken in a natural landscape in Lanzarote and it was a photo of a red fabric covering both of our bodies and revealing only our limbs - turning us into a single body with insect-like qualities. Interestingly enough, AI transformed the volcanic landscape into a man-made environment and made our human form completely disappear. The resulting image depicts a lit-up red fabric with a life of its own, standing very erectly over this new world. The way that artificial intelligence had completely erased us from the image made me smile, it felt like AI had its own sense of humor and had metaphorically answered some of my questions about the role of technology in humanity.

Thank you so much for engaging in this dialogue with us. We really enjoyed exchanging images and thoughts with you.

Following the collaboration we asked Glish Group and Red Rubber Road about the experience.

Describe the collaborative process with a total stranger on the other side of the world.
Glish Group: It was an amazing practice, quite different from how we usually work. Typically, we spend months or even years on projects, and taking a photo once every 2-3 days was unusual and sometimes challenging. In the beginning, it was easier to create images, but towards the end, we encountered much more difficult topics to visually represent, and we had to think a lot about what we could shoot. However, collaboration with Nathalie and AnaHell allowed this challenge to pass smoothly.
The images of our partners were simply wonderful and inspired us a lot. We were also very fascinated by our written dialogue.
Red Rubber Road: It was interesting for us to have a visual dialogue like this with two other artists who are working together, as we are both used to having a dialogue back and forth between the two of us. We felt that this exchange brought fresh input and perspective. Also, it’s the first time that we both were shooting images for Red Rubber Road independently and not together (physically or virtually) like we normally do. So there was an additional dialogue between us that was also happening over time by e-mail and text messages. This multi-layered written dialogue was fun.
We liked the idea of creating an image in response to what the other artists were doing and watching the process evolve. We felt like even though three weeks is not a long time, it was enough for the project to take surprising turns and to take on different moods and we really like how it developed – from more personal and emotional imagery to some more abstract photos and even to the use of AI.

How did the visual dialogue affect your work?
Glish Group: Now, looking at a sequence of images, we feel like we're watching a kind of movie, with its own development and turning points - and we love it a lot. The image exchange is like a montage that is connected to the course of our letter exchange.
During the visual dialogue, we focused on the topic of nomadism, exploring both its physical and digital aspects, as all of us had been traveling a lot recently. But we feel that the dialogue itself became a kind of journey, where we started from our physical surroundings and then moved to digital dimensions, experimenting with the environment, bodies, objects, and digital images.
Red Rubber Road: We are really happy with the outcome and with the images we took. We felt that even though we were apart and in very different environments (Thailand and Berlin) the images weave a visual web that tells a story. We also love Glish Group’s images and the interplay of all of the photos, even though they are quite different.

How will it affect the way you work, or think about making work in the future?
Glish Group: The visual dialogue began for us when we recently moved to the US, and we felt a bit lost trying to acclimate to our new surroundings. However, reflecting on our feelings together with Ana and Nathalie and exchanging our experiences gave us new motivation to work. Initially, we created some images in the style we were accustomed to, but the development of the dialogue forced us to try new things. We had never worked with a projector before and had almost never made collages - so it seems to us that we have acquired new tools for our future practice.
The very idea of collaboration and dialogue is not really new to us - we are an artist duo working together for a long time. However, now there were four of us, located in different parts of the world - Europe, Asia, and America, which created a very complex and multi-level structure for the visual dialogue. We believe that expanding collaboration is a great practice that we can use in the future. Also, an important issue is having a clear understanding of who our work is addressed to and making our photography messages more personal.
Red Rubber Road: We really enjoyed giving each other input and creating the images on our own, more loosely under a sort of conceptual frame. We can imagine working more like this in the future as we don’t always have the chance to work together in the same place or at the same time.

glish @glish.group
red rubber road @redrubberroad

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